The day of recognition began on April 22, 1970 — a date deliberately chosen by U.S. Democrat Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, and young activist Denis Hayes, to fall between Spring Break and Final Exams, maximizing student participation in what began as a national environmental teach-in, according to earthday.org.
Climatologist David Legates of the Cornwall Alliance said there were several environmental issues at the time of the birth of Earth Day.
"There was a lot of environmental degradation and part of what came out of it was a push at that point for the Clean Air Act and eventually the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And I don't think anybody sees anything wrong with those. I show pictures of smog in LA, and you can barely tell there's a city in there.”
The Clean Air Act and EPA have made positive contributions to the environment.
“Now you look at LA, and it's all cleaned up. We have done wonders in all those to make our environment much more livable and much more as God would have it."
Legates said there was an undercurrent of population control back then along with the gloom and doom predictions about mass starvation, which didn't happen. Such people are never held accountable for their forecasts, Legates said.
He also said the concept of climate change was brought into the Earth Day camp along with green energy. The motivation was in part to get rich countries to turn over their wealth to the United Nations to give just a little of it to the poor countries.
Legates said biblical Earth stewardship is the way and not worship of the creation, but the Creator.
"What bothers me is I keep hearing an awful lot of this environmentalist argument, particularly from creation care, that says, 'No, no, no, no, we have to keep everything in the ground. We have to have minimal impact.' And fossil fuels and the energy they might produce can bring people out of poverty because energy is one of the great cures of poverty.”
